Whose Battle?

Whose Battle?

Images from half a dozen global hot spots remind me that ours is not a world at peace. But I don’t have to look any farther than my own block to know that. On my street, even in my own household of one, a wicked war rages.

There’s the battlefront of sin and selfishness—skirmishes occur there daily. Artillery is launched with great regularity on behalf of and against pride. The struggle against halfheartedness and hard-heartedness is never entirely won. New combat zones are uncovered more often than I’d like. Negotiations are futile. My determined interests always crowd out reason and demand satisfaction. The old self just won’t go down without a fight.

The question is, whose fight is it?

The apostle Paul confesses that even he finds himself in the thick of it: “The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge” (Romans 7:21-23, MSG).

You, too, Paul? If you can’t win, then how can I? “Is there no one who can do anything for me?” he asks (Romans 7:24, MSG). Then, as if a light comes on, he answers his own question: “The answer . . . is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different” (Romans 7:25, MSG).

Whose battle is it? It’s the Son of God’s battle—and he’s won it already. My job is just to walk the conquered field in faith, trusting that he will keep an honest tally of the score.

So when I lose the struggle (and I’ve lost more than a few), it’s good to know that someone else has long ago won the war.

Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life.

Romans 8:5-6, MSG